


Two Branches, One Tree

by acommontater



Category: Glee
Genre: Gen, M/M, angsty fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 12:29:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4305123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acommontater/pseuds/acommontater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grow old along with me<br/>Two branches of one tree<br/>Face the setting sun<br/>When the day is done<br/>God bless our love</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Branches, One Tree

**Author's Note:**

> This was a 'Come What May' reaction fic, which continued my theme of something incredibly schmoopy and romantic happening in canon and me writing fic that isn't particularly either.
> 
> Warning for character death (but it's nothing bad I promise!)
> 
> Title is from John Lennon's 'Grow Old With Me'

He’s walking slowly down the hall (always so slow now- he used to be able to keep pace with teenagers. Now the youngsters that work here could run circles around him if they’d wanted to. [And he’s well aware that they refer to him as 'Sir Crawford’ behind his back. He rather likes it honestly.]) when he hears a familiar song playing in one of the lounges. He pauses, listening for a moment before poking his head into the room.

A solitary figure sits on the couch, walker parked near-by and being used as a table for the mug the figure has a hand wrapped around. The room is dim- the only light is the blue glow from the television screen.

Sure enough, the beginning of 'Lady Marmalade’ is playing on the screen. He takes a few steps into the room- the person on the couch not noticing him. Or perhaps choosing to ignore him.

Adam clears his throat. The figure turns.

“Um, do you mind if I sit and watch with you? I’ve always enjoyed the movie, and it’s been ages since I’ve seen it.”

The figure- a man, he realizes as he steps closer- waves a hand, indicating that he was welcome.

He smiles and gives the man a nod in thanks as he settles into one of the plush chairs, setting his cane to the side. Adam watches the film for a while, several songs passing without any conversation. He smiles gently as the young poet hopefully serenades his future lover.

“Ah, to be young and in love again.” He murmurs, half to himself.

The other man sighs in what seems to be agreement.

“My husband and I danced to that song at our wedding. He used to sing it to me all the time.”

Adam looks back over at the other man. His face is dreamy, clearing remembering some long-ago memory that Adam has no part in. Adam chuckles.

“My husband was never such a romantic- took everything very seriously an never quite understood the point of musicals. Ironic, being married to me, but he was never anything less than fully supportive with my endeavors.”

They share a brief glance- an exchanging of understanding and empathy- before turning back to the movie.

Adam finds himself watching the movie less and less (he knows it by heart anyway) and watching the other man more and more.

He is full of refined elegance, like that of a weathered statue. The harsh bright beauty of youth, tempered and trained with age. Tissue-paper fine creases in his skin showing through to the blues of his veins. Time-smoothed and knotted hands are clasped in his lap as he watches the lovers story play out. He still wears his wedding rings. He is dressed elegantly, as though he has spent so much of his life in beautiful clothes and sharp-cut suits that it is a part of him to dress well, even if he is not leaving the building. His hair is silvery-white, thinning on the top, and sculpted back into a hair-spray held swoop. A silver pin of a bird in flight adorns the cardigan he’s wearing.

Adam wonders what his story is.

The shine and glitter of a half-fictional world draws him back into the movie. They get through the next couple songs without anymore conversation.

The scene changes- the younger lovers, half-dressed in the morning light.

“…and no matter how bad things get, or what ever happens, whenever you hear it, or you sing it, or whistle it, or hum it- then you’ll know. it’ll mean that we love one another.”

Adam watches as the other man’s hand tense, fingers twisting together, back stiffening. The music begins the introduction and there’s a sudden catch to the man’s breath that makes Adam look over again, only to see the sheen over tears in the man’s eyes. Concerned, he reaches for the remote to pause the movie, but his hand is stilled. The other man’s eyes are still riveted to the screen, but his hand is clutching Adam’s wrist.

The song ends and the grip on his wrist is loosened, allowing him to pause the screen on the Duke’s angry face. He turns back to the other man, unsurprised to find tears on his face.

“Hey, are you alright?” He asks.

The man nods quickly, a hand rising to strike the few escaped tears from his face.

“I’m fine. Sorry for getting so emotional, it’s just…” He trails off, lost in thought.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” Adam says gently.

He takes the other man’s hand inbetween his own, giving him a grounded point to hold onto. The other man sighs heavily before looking up at him.

“I’m so sorry, where are my manners.” He squeezes Adam’s hand in lieu of a handshake. “I’m Kurt, Kurt Hummel.”

Adam squeezes back, his face crinkling into a warm smile.

“Adam Crawford.”

They become fast friends after that.

Adam learns that Kurt will be eighty-eight the following week, that he has three children, seven grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Kurt had opened his own fashion house in his late thirties, after performing on the stage for nearly twenty years. (He had kept performing, he’s quick to assure Adam, but the toe over the doorway to fame from his short stint on Broadway had opened up several opportunities for him when he’d finally but some of his designs out there.) Kurt and his husband had gotten married in their early twenties and, despite the unease from their friends and family, had had close to seven decades of being happily married.

Kurt, in turn, learns that Adam is ninety, earned a Phd in both Dance and Education and had started his own performing arts school for anyone who wanted to come. Adam and his husband had had only one daughter, but a multitude of grandchildren- both related by blood and by choice. He had several small potted cacti in his apartment, because he found them fascinating, and crocheted hats and scarfs for fun.

They both had lost their spouses- Kurt to heart failure the previous year (“From loving everything too much- I always warned him that it would put a strain on his heart.”) and Adam to the creeping hands of time nearly five years previously (“He made me swear up and down that I wouldn’t wallow for more than a week and a half, or he’d come back from thee grave and use his freezing ghost hands to force me out of the house.”)

(Kurt hears the echo of his younger self “You both have dead spouses, you should talk!" and wonders if there wasn’t some wisdom there.)

They have dinner together as often as they can, and have weekly musical-watching nights. Adam finds that Kurt is ridiculously good at crossword puzzles, whereas Kurt finds that Adam can solve sudoku problems in under ten minutes.

A month and a half after they met, Adam walks Kurt back to his apartment on the fourth floor and kisses him on the cheek before bidding him goodnight and heading to his apartment two floors up.

(If he were a young man again, he might’ve done a dance at working up the nerve to kiss someone as wonderful as Kurt, even if only on the cheek.)

It’s not a sweeping romance like the movies always want you to believe it should be. It’s sweet, but not slow (because they are both aware of how time passes too quickly and how soon goodbyes can come) and while they are not perhaps the most conventional of lovers- they are not young, nor do burn in each others heart quite so brightly as those who had come before- but it is a comfortable romance. As though love were a paperback book worn from reading a favorite story so often that it fits perfectly in your hands and falls open the your favorite pages, instead of a torch to be carried. Their companionship is comfortable and warms their souls like Adam’s colorful hats or Kurt’s cups of tea.

(They talk about their lost loves, sometimes. They agree that their respective husbands would have been pleased that they each found someone to make them happy.)

They move into a shared apartment a little over two months after meeting- they spent so much time together anyway it seemed silly to stay separated. And, although neither would admit it, it was nice to was fall asleep with another warm body and arms wrapped around you, no matter how frail or creaky they might seem.

Often they find themselves cuddles together on the couch as they watch whatever evening program they’ve chosen for themselves; Adam with an arm slung over Kurt’s shoulders as they’re tucked together, knobby bones and creased skin fitting neatly against each other.

(Sometimes when they want to entertain themselves, they flirt shamelessly over dinner whenever they’re in earshot of the young works. Seven out of ten times they’ll get a good reaction.)

They live peacefully together for the last two years of their lives.

One evening, twenty-one months and several days since they’d met, as they climb into bed, Kurt sighs heavily.

"I don’t think that there’s much time left for me, dear.”

Adam just pulls him close, tugging the thick blankets up over them.

“Don’t talk like that, love.” He presses a kiss to Kurt’s forehead. “We’ve still got plenty of time.”

“Still.” Kurt yawns from where his head is resting on Adam’s chest. “Everything’s in order, you know what to do. And I’ve got the same for you, just in case.”

“Mmm, g'night, love.”

“'night.”

(When Adam wakes up to find Kurt still and not-quite cool in his arms, he doesn’t cry. He presses one last kiss to Kurt’s cheek and then makes the necessary phone-calls. He only lives a few days longer before passing away in his sleep as well.)

They had differing beliefs about the afterlife, whether or not there was one, and what would theoretically happen in one. Kurt would probably say that their bodies just become part of the earth again, but Adam would probably like to believe that they found each other again and their first loves, and that all of them were happy together.

But no one can truly know for sure.


End file.
